Newcastle Jets head coach Gary van Egmond believes Tuesday night’s Asian Champions League opponents Nagoya Grampus are ‘beatable’.
The Jets arrived in Japan at the weekend for their match day three clash against the J-League powerhouse club as distinct underdogs but they will be drawing on the confidence of a home win against Korean side Ulsan Hyundai last start.
Newcastle beat Ulsan 2-0 at home after going down to Beijing by the same score in its ACL debut last month and van Egmond said the two performances had given the Australian team good belief of scoring a win in Japan on Tuesday night.
“Nagoya is favourite to win our group and one of the favourites to win the whole thing so we are under no illusion as to how hard the match will be,” said van Egmond..
“But they are definitely beatable.”
“We just have to ensure that we don’t give away an early goal like we did against Beijing and we have been working on that.”
Newcastle has brought in five new players including former Socceroo Ljubo Milicevic, Italian playmaker Fabio Vignaroli and Dutchman Donny de Groot since the end of the Hyundai A-League season and van Egmond said the relative ‘mystery’ of his side will also benefit the Jets in the match against Nagoya.
“They (Nagoya) will have a case of not knowing too much about us,” he said.
“They will only have the games against Ulsan and Beijing to go off, while we have done quite an in-depth study on them from the last few games in the ACL and J-League, so that puts us in good stead.”
